


Rose and Thistle

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003) RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-13
Updated: 2006-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:47:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1629854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      Thanks to Ness and Shoshanna for the excellent betas.<p>Written for inlovewithnight</p>
    </blockquote>





	Rose and Thistle

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Ness and Shoshanna for the excellent betas.
> 
> Written for inlovewithnight

 

 

Rose and Thistle

They hardly ever have scenes together, but after three years of production, it's hard to avoid spending time with any member of the cast. Jamie can remember getting stuck in an airport with Nikki for eighteen hours, something he's not keen on doing again - not because he doesn't like Nikki, even if then they'd only had a pack of playing cards and an iPod with a dying battery between the two of them for entertainment, but because he hates airports. Especially big airports.

So when he ends up at the LAX bar with Tricia, he's nervous and jumpy, and glad that Tricia in the flesh looks quite a bit different than she does on TV, because that stops most of the autograph hounds. Not to mention they're on the last flight back to Vancouver, and the later the flight, the less people around them pay attention.

Rule number six is what happens in LA doesn't count, but that doesn't explain why Tricia's sitting there in jeans and a t-shirt and sneakers sucking on the olive from her cocktail and Jamie's squeezing his beer bottle so hard that he wonders if it will break. It wouldn't be a good idea to go back to work with a hand injury he couldn't give an explanation for, especially after they'd taken care not to leave any marks on each other.

Tricia glances at him and chews her olive. Jamie slides closer, just a little, because he can't stop himself from doing it.

*

In the bathroom on the airplane she breathes heat on his neck just like she had the night before and he thinks _fuck, fuck, fuck, we're going to get caught,_ but they don't.

He decides it still counts as LA when Tricia unbuttons his fly and pushes his legs apart for the space.

*

Rules number one through five are all variations on the same thing: what happens on set stays on set. Most of the time these rules apply to Katee, who's always being directed into his personal space and who usually smells like bubblegum and ocean air together which goes straight to his dick. He doesn't really want to sleep with her, and the one time he jerked off in the shower picturing her giving him a blowjob doesn't count.

Jamie doesn't think he can get away with telling himself that Tricia taking off her red Number Six dress in front of him in the empty makeup trailer doesn't count. Not this time.

*

"You're overanalyzing," she tells him one day in her trailer, crossing her arms and tilting her head and giving him a look.

"Maybe we shouldn't be doing this," he responds, but it's not the best thing he's ever said while not wearing clothes, and Tricia merely scoffs at him and then smiles before checking that the door is locked and climbing on top of him, all golden skin and impossibly long legs. Looking up, Jamie wonders how much of a choice he ever had in this.

*

He gets to the point where all he remembers of that first LA trip is Tricia in the hotel bar, shaking the pretzel mix to find the crunchy zigzag bits, looking at him like he's the only person she knows in the room. He could have blamed it on alcohol, except the next night they'd both been stone cold sober and he'd slid his hand between her legs at dinner and found she wasn't wearing anything underneath her dress. It had been blue and silky, and made a beautiful puddle of satin on the floor of his hotel room later when she'd stepped out of it.

"Men can never resist once I take my clothes off," she'd told him afterward, lying in his arms, her skin as smooth as the dress had been, and Jamie had thought that was a shame, because she really was smarter than that. She just knew when to hide it.

*

There's a lot of standing around waiting on set. Some of that time is spent attempting to avoid the behind-the-scenes cameras, and occasionally a news crew, but usually it's just standing there waiting to see if the makeup girl is going to descend upon you next. Jamie is standing on the edge of the hangar bay set, doing his best to avoid the videographer and reading the text messages his wife had sent while he'd been filming. She's trying to explain some stupid thing the twins have done in a hundred and fifty characters each time, and he loves his kids so much that sometimes his chest hurts just thinking about it. It's times like this that he feels guiltiest - Kerry's been on set and she knows the rules and he even told her about the Katee thing once, but he knows she doesn't think that he'd ever _do_ anything that would mean actually invoking the rules.

Except he and Tricia have gotten to the point that they've broken rule number twenty: if it happens more times than there are rules, it's got to stop. They haven't stopped. And they've nearly run out of places on set to have sex. They've gotten good use out of the couch in Adama's quarters, but there is always the chance of someone walking in, even late at night after most of the crew have left. And there are only so many times he can be seen going into Tricia's trailer before it stops being a secret.

*

"Don't you think we should stop eventually?" he asks Tricia one day, two months after Los Angeles, very quietly so that Tahmoh, who's standing a few feet away talking on his cell phone, won't hear.

"You want to stop?" she whispers back. She's waiting for makeup and while she's still uncommonly beautiful when she doesn't look like Six, it's not as sharp a beauty, and he always feels kind of comforted by it.

"Not yet," he answers, and it's that easy.

*

He gets stuck at LaGuardia with Katee for thirteen hours next, but it turns out okay because Katee knows he hates airports and she can make a joke last an hour or more, which isn't a bad thing when there's got nothing else to do. They wander through the bookshop for a while, but the last book he'd bought in an airport had been terrible and now he's afraid he's cursed. Katee laughs at this and punches him in the arm before buying the newest John Grisham and saying, "fine, but you better not want to borrow this in five hours."

She still smells like bubblegum and the ocean, and she leans her head on his shoulder as they wait in the molded plastic chairs by their gate, and Jamie wonders how he ended up having an affair with Tricia instead. He doesn't let himself think on it for very long.

*

He goes out to dinner with Tricia back in Vancouver and they don't talk until after he orders a brandy at the end of the meal. Sitting here across from her without saying a word makes him want to get very drunk. And take off all her clothes, normally, but right now she's glaring at him and stirring her drink angrily, one arm folded over the other. Underneath the table, she's swinging her shoe hard against his leg. "Stop it," he hisses. "Why are we doing this, Trish?"

"Because you're fucking fantastic in bed," she answers, and puts her foot in his lap.

"Christ, not here," he whispers furiously, because rule number seven is never, ever, ever in public. But Tricia just smiles lazily and wiggles her toes and he has to cover his groan with a napkin.

It's the last night they sleep together.

*

The next time he they're in LA for a convention, Tricia hails her own cab outside the airport. "I have to visit my husband for real this time," she says, and gets in.

Jamie spends two whole minutes thinking he's going to be sick into the nearest flowerbed, as if he'd never even thought about the fact that Tricia was married as well, and then Tahmoh grabs his arm and says, "come on."

*

"You gotta get over it, man," Tahmoh says close to his ear in the bar, his voice gentle. "Move on. It's this year's secret everyone knows. You stand there and stare at each other, for God's sake."

Last year's secret had ended with them all having a sign a confidentiality agreement. Jamie can't bear the idea of having this on paper like that. "I've been the world's worst idiot," he says, downing his beer and gesturing for another and waiting for Tahmoh to say something like _it's okay, everyone does something stupid once in their lives, you're not the only one_ but he doesn't.

He just moves a little closer and says, "You can get over Trish with me if you want," and Jamie knows it's a bad idea, a very bad idea. But knowing and doing are two different things, and Tahmoh grins like he gets it, puts his warm palm on Jamie's knee and slides his fingers slowly up Jamie's thigh.

The next morning Tahmoh's asleep next to him, his head is pounding from the hangover and he's fairly sure liquor had something to do with the fact that they ended up in bed together, Tahmoh's hand on his dick as hockey had blared from the television on one of the two thousand channels.

*

"I think I might need a psychiatrist," he says when they're back in Vancouver.

"Why?" Tahmoh asks, looking up from the book he's reading. Jamie glances at it and realizes it's the one Katee bought in New York at the airport.

"Because I have a wife. A gorgeous woman, the mother of my children, and I keep cheating on her with my co-stars."

Tahmoh shrugs, and Jamie feels vaguely offended. "You don't need a shrink," Tahmoh says, "you need to stop sleeping around. You're too young to be having a mid-life crisis."

Jamie opens his mouth to ask what he would know about having a mid-life crisis, but then he shuts it again. After all, Tahmoh is the person he's currently cheating on his wife with.

They go back to Jamie's trailer and Tahmoh asks, "It's not weird, being around Tricia?"

And Jamie answers that it's not and Tahmoh grins and says good, that hopefully this won't be weird either when it's over.

*

Jamie goes through a week where his Katee problem is almost unbearable and he's almost glad he's in the middle of his bizarre affair, because Tahmoh is absolutely, positively, nothing like Katee, and it saves Jamie from doing something even more unforgivably stupid than what he's already doing.

*

"You think anyone knows?" he asks Tahmoh one afternoon, surrounded by racks of costumes in wardrobe. He's shooting all night, but Tahmoh's done for the day. Jamie decides against asking him to hang around.

Tahmoh finishes pulling his sweater over his head. "Do you have any idea how many people on this set are fucking around?"

"Not really," Jamie confesses, since he's never actually paid attention, and Tahmoh chuckles.

"Enough that they don't care about us, okay?" He finishes getting dressed, kisses Jamie hard on the mouth, and leaves.

Later, Jamie realizes that was the first time they'd actually kissed. It doesn't happen again, so he figures it was really a goodbye. Especially when he sees Tricia going up the steps to Tahmoh's trailer, the look on her face one he'd know anywhere. He sees Tahmoh lean in the doorway and aim that slow easy grin at her, and realizes he'd been the world's biggest fool.

*

They have an entire weekend off, including Friday night, and Jamie goes home to his actual house and his wife and his adorable giggling children that he holds upside down by the ankles while they shriek with laughter, and he does it without thinking about any of his co-stars once. Jamie almost thinks it proves the first five rules but the less he thinks about it, the more he realizes he's not a proving kind of guy.

 

 

 


End file.
